Field of Screams: My daughter, the power hitter

I’ve developed this weird fear that someone will video tape me pitching baseballs to my daughter. It’s like a Candid Camera nightmare from hell. I’m just horrified to imagine what it looks like to an outside observer.

Basically, I do an outlandish windup and then underhand the ball her way, before I immediately crouch into an awkward stance in a desperate attempt to get ready for a comebacker. It is not graceful. And it rarely works anyway. Not to brag, but I’m actually an OK fielder. I play softball every weekend and can handle myself on the field. But when the kid gets ahold of a ball, she really lays into it, and often I can barely get out of the way, let alone actually catch the ball. I’ve had welts last for days on my forearms and thighs, my skin etched with little round, purple and yellow discs. She hit a ball so hard into my cheek the other day that my wife said I woke up screaming that night, shielding myself.

The funny thing is, Emmeline can’t really throw. She can just barely catch. Maybe. Sometimes. If the wind is just right. But she can hit a ball so hard that I have found myself ducking and twisting and, I admit it, running in the split seconds after I release the ball. The girl is 5. And she hits with such power and accuracy that it scares me. Just for fun, I started throwing her overhand hardballs, just to see what might happen. After that little experiment, I’d be surprised if I could produce a second child.

We went to our first Giants game of the year last week. I have fond memories of her swatting whiffle balls in the little Tot Lot miniature stadium in past years, this pint-size little 3 or 4 year old smacking a ball and then gleefully running the bases. But this year, this year the scene was not quite as fun.

Emme has been talking about the Tot Lot for weeks now, as she riddled me with wounds in the backyard.

“I’m going to crush one over the fence!” she would giggle. I had no doubt she could.

When we got to the lot, she had to stand in front of a measuring stick, and at first I thought it was to make sure she was tall enough — her whole life up to this point, she’s been kept off big kid rides and games because she didn’t quite reach the right height. But this measuring stick, I suddenly realized, was designed to see if she was small enough to play. It made total sense, thinking about the poor Tot Lot pitcher taking endless whiffle balls to the shins and forearms from these miniature Barry Bonds. But it was still bittersweet to document the moment when she became a Big Kid, a kid old and tall enough to outgrow the fun experiences of her early childhood.

She cried and cried when I told her she had grown too much over the winter, that she’d have to stand with the parents and older siblings outside the miniature arena, watching the little kids get a turn at the bat. I hoped the Coke Bottle slides would cheer her up and they did for awhile. By the time we found our seats, however, her thoughts had apparently returned to the Tot Lot.

“I could have done it,” she told me, staring across the stadium to the lot.

“What’s that?”

“I could have crushed one of those balls,” she said.

I looked at my forearm. There was a faint tinge of yellow just below the elbow. We had hot dogs and shared a bag of Cracker Jack, and I told her we could play as much baseball as she wanted when we got home.